Nobody knows when the Bureau was founded. Nobody knows how far it extends. But when the first Egg was found, a team was swiftly sent to investigate. Faster than it should have been possible, even with the fastest planes.
And then they were gone, before anyone could ask questions. It was the first of the Tier One events, the first wave of what would soon become a global disaster.
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Dreamscapes. Strange lands where all that is impossible happens. Places where, sometimes, one can get a glimpse of what the future holds for them.
The elven hunters appeared out of the thick foliage of the forest. They were all around, powerful and menacing, watching Albert from the crowns of the strange trees that loomed with their impossible height and thick branches. Their leader was hidden, but he had sent forth an illusion to negotiate the terms of surrender. How Albert knew all that, he did not know. How he managed to be so calm, he did not know.
The world was vibrant and sharply in focus. Feelings and sensations revealed much more than what mere sight and sound ever could.
It felt like it wasn't really him inside his body. He felt calm, confident, powerful.
There was another man with him, talking with the elf. He did not care about what they said, for he knew where the real source of the illusion was hiding and knew that there was no room for negotiations. With a simple thought, he imposed his will onto the world and activated his Telekinesis ability. The tree where the elf stood exploded in a shower of splinters, and the battle began.
Time slowed down. Skills were being invoked, magic flowed freely and easily through Albert’s body. Fireballs, incandescent and powerful, were being tossed at impossibly fast enemies. Explosions shook the forest, seen in slow-motion. Albert found himself weaving through the attacks with ease, intercepting arrows with his bare hands, taking hits that did not hurt, healing himself with magic.
He jumped through space and time as the elven hunters all attacked him. His other companion also took hits, but also fiercely fought back with his colossal sword and tanked hits with his massive armor.
Albert reached out to somewhere and suddenly he was holding a massive machine gun and raining fire on the forest. Then he had a sword, with an infinitely sharp edge that never dulled.
The battle raged on. For minutes. The tide was uncertain. Albert felt tired, the adrenaline keeping him focused but the prolonged battle sapping him of his strength. He pulled some crystals from his somewhere space, and absorbed them. Feeling refreshed, he once again went on the offensive. Chain lightning blossomed from his fingertips, striking his foes and exploding entire branches of trees with its deadly electricity.
Fireballs manifested out of nowhere, on command.
Yet, they seemed to be losing.
A dark shadow passed through Albert’s heart. And he did not recognize himself anymore. He knew that the man whose eyes he was looking through was not him. He could never be him. He could never do what that man wanted to do.
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[New quest]
* Quest: feel the flow of mana in the world.
* Reward: [Perception I] skill video.
The strange, unexpected, floating text woke Albert up from his sleep. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and noticed that it was still dark outside. It was two in the morning, the big red digits on his clock told him. His brain slowly started to pick up speed as the vestiges of sleep were forcefully purged from his mind by the adrenaline.
His hands were shaking uncontrollably.
This was a System Scenario.
The unexpected happened. The impossible happened. The very same thing he, along with thousands of other nerds like him always dreamt about, happened before his very eyes. And yet, this was real and not a dream, his reality checks all but ruled out that possibility. There was a system, and it talked about mana, which meant that there was magic too.
As far as he knew, he was the only one to whom such a thing had ever happened. Of course, there were a couple possibilities that might explain why he had never heard of magic, real magic, before. Either it was kept perfectly secret, or maybe… the system and whatever magic it talked about had just arrived on planet Earth. He was knowledgeable enough about this matter to know not to discount these possible scenarios, lest they come back to bite him in the ass down the road.
For now, however, he felt that it was perfectly fine for him to take a little moment to let the reality of the situation sink in, before throwing himself in the main character training montage. Which was almost inevitable, if the ongoing quest was anything to go by.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
As the moment passed, he took a deep breath, and tried to calm his raging mind. Left to its own devices, his brain was surely going to go off on a million tangents, thinking about this and that and all the wonderful and probably terrible things to come. As much as he liked to think that he was prepared, Albert knew that he was not. His ‘preparedness’ was nothing more than daydreaming about magic in his spare time, and sometimes even during class, thinking himself as the main character of the novel he was reading at the moment. Well, not always the main character. In fact, he had a deep appreciation for the often neglected secondary characters of the stories, the secondary cast that more often than not was just background characters who did nothing but live for the protagonist in some way. In his mind, they deserved more than what they got. And in his mind, he was not main character material, but he would do wonders as a sidekick.
Reality was not a story, however, as much as he liked to think it as one. Even the appearance of the system didn’t change that, not really. If his guess was right, after a brief time of apparent peace, his life was about to become quite hectic. He’d better prepare.
He glanced at the clock again. 2:13 AM. More than five hours until the alarm went off. He sat upright on his bed, propping his back against the cold wall. It felt pleasant, a welcome respite from the lingering heat of September in a big city. He closed his eyes, and crossed his legs. Of course, he had no idea on how to even approach the quest, and if the arrival of the system had changed anything on the planet or within himself, he hadn't noticed anything. This meant that, while the quest had to be doable, it was not going to be easy.
Feeling the flow of mana. As far as generic requests went, it reminded him of his own mother’s random and generic ‘quests’, as they were, although perhaps this one was even more generic than being asked to 'clean the room', but not by much. It was like asking someone to feel their own brain think, or their own blood move through their veins. Did it make any sense? Could it be done?
Albert spent three hours trying to answer that particular question. He was about to give up, for the umpteenth time, but decided to focus on a particular feeling for a little while longer. His patience had long since run dry, and he was running on fumes and on his own stubbornness and excitement. If this was enough to make him quit, then he wasn't suited for magic after all. That, he refused to accept. Thus, he focused on that little prickling feeling he felt right between his eyes, under the first layer of his skin. It was a sensation that made itself known whenever he achieved a particular state of mind he had trouble describing, but no issue replicating.
He had first felt this strange sensation back when he had read about Qi online, in a blog article. It was a bogus article. Nothing had happened, of course. There was no cultivation in the real world, and the eastern monks were all nut cases who hit their balls with bricks. But the sensation was odd enough that when he wanted to have some idle fun, he just closed his eyes and tried to feel it until it became almost uncomfortable.
This time he pushed through the uncomfortableness. It was like breaking a glass wall. Somehow, strange sensations began to flood in. Even when he opened his eyes, and looked around, and the strange mental state subsided, they kept coming. Intangible yet very real sensations.
[Quest complete.]
The reward for the quest appeared before his eyes. He didn't pay much attention to the wording of the reward itself, earlier when he got the quest, but now he finally realized what the system meant by skill video. It was an actual video window, floating in mid air before his eyes like some sort of augmented reality.
“Welcome. In this video, we will talk about perception.” the man in the video said. It looked oddly like Albert himself, and spoke just like him, or rather like the version of him that lived in his fantasy.
“In order to practice magic, perception is key. You cannot move that which you cannot see, right? You cannot affect that which you don’t know is there, can you? No. Perception is the foundation upon which we will build all of our magic, a skill never to be neglected, never to be left behind. It might not be flashy, it might not be something to show your friends, but it’s what makes a great mage, as opposed to a mediocre one. It’s what saves your life. It’s always the punch you don't see coming that puts you down.”
Wait, Albert thought. But the version of him in the video just went on.
“It’s a quote from Riddick.” he said, deadpan. “Now, then, onto perception itself.”
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[Skill acquired: Perception I]
It was way past the time the alarm usually rang, but Albert had only distractedly hit the snooze button before returning to the video. It took him surprisingly little, once the video ended, to understand the explanation and put theory into practice. Perhaps this was the power of system-rewarded skill videos. It felt almost as if the knowledge was always there in his head, only hidden.
The skill didn’t do much. When he used it, he felt that the world became a little bit more vibrant, a little bit louder, and he could see a bit more details. It was like that scene from Limitless, but nothing extravagant. He did feel a little tired after a while, something that compounded with his headache that he got from the sensory overload of a prolonged skill use. Looking inward, he could vaguely feel that he was a little bit less, in terms of those unknown things he felt when he was feeling for mana. It made sense. He spent most of his mana playing around with [Perception], and now he needed to rest and replenish his reserves.
A knock on the door told him that rest was for the wicked.
“Albert!” his mother said. “You’re gonna miss the bus.”